CNN’s Abby Phillip hosted a panel on Thursday night that didn’t go quite as she had planned. Phillip has become more visible over the last several years and gaining notoriety on the network. Of course, making a name for yourself on CNN involves being a hack who rushes to the defense of Democrats on a routine basis.
Phillip hasn’t disappointed in that arena, and she’s only become worse since Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic Party presidential nominee. While she briefly acted like an actual journalist during the fight to shove Joe Biden under the bus, everyone paying attention knows that bout of press honesty was self-serving and only meant to benefit Democrats.
SEE: Matt Gaetz Causes CNN Host to End Interview After Fact-Checking Her on Air
On Wednesday, Phillip offered another example of her inability to do her job during a “State of the Race” opinion panel that included a multitude of Democrat analysts and Republican analyst Scott Jennings, with the latter continuing to do great work as the lone voice of reason on CNN. It wasn’t just Jennings who spoke up this time, though. Phillip offered a lie so egregious that even the liberals on the panel couldn’t let it slide.
TURNER: On the fracking question, to the vice president, and this is me as a liberator. She, in 2019, when she was running, she said, “I’m done with, fracking, you know, we’re gonna do away with it.” You can’t say you’re going to do away with it. They had her dead to rights on that. What you can say as a candidate that, “I’m not in 2019, I’m not in 2020, and you know what, I’ve changed my mind.”
PHILLIP: Well, she, she, I guess the point, the reality of it is that she reversed herself in 2020, like that…
(Cross-talk as everyone else fact-checks her at once)
Why is a supposed unbiased news anchor jumping in to tell easily debunked lies in defense of Kamala Harris? That should be the first question that’s asked after watching that clip. Nina Turner is a radical leftist, but she’s right that the vice president was against fracking during the 2020 election. Phillip likely read someone say otherwise on social media and didn’t bother to research the claim, but why is it her job to offer that talking point in the first place?
This is the same thing the ABC News moderators did during the debate on Tuesday night. At least twice, they jumped in to “fact-check” Donald Trump only for their fact-checks to be wrong or misleading. Journalists should stick to doing their jobs, which is to report the news, not make it. If Phillip wants to be an analyst, she should give up the faux mantle of objectivity and go be one.
There’s also an underhanded game being played here by Phillip. At no point did Harris reverse her position in 2020 and denounce her previous calls to unequivocally ban fracking. Instead, she joined a presidential campaign that held a different view because of who was at the top of the ticket. Harris is now at the top of the ticket. She doesn’t get to pretend her position has changed just because she kept her mouth shut as Biden’s vice president, and it is a disgrace that the ABC News moderators didn’t press Harris on the issue.
Still, it’s funny to see that even far-left analysts on a CNN panel are willing to roll their eyes and push back at some of the lies these hosts are willing to tell. Harris pledged to ban fracking completely. That’s the truth of the matter, and she has offered no explanation for her supposed shift on the issue.
